Slashdot Mirror
Kid Racks Up $5,900 Bill Playing Jurassic World On Dad's iPad (pcmag.com)
theodp writes: For Mohamed Shugaa, the scariest Jurassic World creature is perhaps Apple CEO Tim Cook, not the Indominus Rex. That's because Shugaa discovered his 7-year-old son had managed to rack up a $5,900 bill playing the Jurassic World game on his iPad in six days. "Why would Apple think I would be spending thousands of pounds on buying dinosaurs and upgrading a game," Shugaa told The Metro. "Why didn't they email me to check I knew these payments were being made? I got nothing from them. How much longer would it have gone on for?" Shugaa discovered his son's 65 in-app purchases when a payment he tried to make to a business supplier was declined. His son had upgraded dinosaurs using the game currency 'Dino Bucks' without realizing it was charging his Dad in real money. The good news is that Apple has decided to refund the money, so the kid doesn't have to worry about Apple making him work 8,500 hours for $5,980 to settle the debt. Btw, before you developers get too excited about the possibility of using In-App Purchase to take kids to the cleaners at $6,000-a-pop, remember that Apple call dibs on the first $1,800!
Talk about naive. A seven year old absolutely needs to be supervised when using a mobile or any internet connected device. The most maddening part of this is that he seems to be expecting Apple to babysit his kid.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
They require a credit card to install free apps. What gets me is they required password for doing anything on the app store even free apps, but no password to buy thousands in upgrades. It's a deliberate scam, or incredible incompetence. I succpect the latter.
The smart child had memorized his father's Apple ID password
A password was required to make an in-game purchase, and even if the father entered it himself, that only works for 15 minutes. How is it Apple's fault that the kid memorized the guy's password?
My question is why would hand a child a device to 'play' with that is tied to a system authorized to make payments? I realize all kinds of people do that every day but its still stupid. You would not hand your kid a wad of cash to used building a house of cards, why would you hand them a computer with credit information embedded?
Both IOS and Android can be set so you at least have to enter your Apple / Google password to make a purchase. If your device isn't set to lock itself with a short timeout or you ever hand it to anyone you can't trust entirely (like your spouse) then you absolutely should have the password for ordering functions on! It is true that the result is this also requires the password for free stuff, but there again if you can't be arsed to manage the entertainment software on your phone for your kid, you probably should get them their own device like maybe a PSP or their own phone with no credit card info associated.
Frankly this is an expensive lesson but this day should pay up and learn it well.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
This is maybe the shittiest article I've seen posted to Slashdot in a long time, and that's saying something.
First, why does the blame fall to Tim Cook of all people instead of the developers of the game?
Second, Apple has already set up a Family Sharing system to prevent just this sort of thing. Never mind the fact that your have to give your kid your password to the account tied to a credit card for this to happen in the first place.
http://www.apple.com/icloud/fa...
To say nothing of the fact that in the article itself they said Apple refunded him the money. But yeah, they're assholes because he doesn't know not to give your kid access to your credit card.
Finally throw in a dash of globalization scare tactics and remind developers that they *only* get 70% of the IAP revenue, which they know about already, and you've got the Slashdot Shithead Trifecta.
Schnapple
First there's a way to adjust the password settings on iPads: Settings > iTunes and App Store > Password Settings. Set it to Always Require for paid apps and in app purchases and Do not require for free downloads. But that's all moot in this case because the kid did know the password and the account is linked to a credit card. It's like he gave his son key to the gun cabinet and later blame the gun manufacturer when the kid hurts himself. Bad bad parenting. The article also mentioned that he should received several email receipts for these purchases. That's Apple's way of reaching out to him and say "something is suspicious". What does he really want? A police officer knocking on his door telling him that there have been big charges on his CC?
In the end though, Apple did reimburse him all the money what else is left to grunge about? Had he given his kid an Android, the situation would have been the same: kids swipe the parent's CC clean. I have no doubt Google would promptly reimburse him, just like Apple did. However, this article was written only because it involved Apple.
Purchases do require a password. The problem is, which the summary left out, the kid knew his dad's password. Because of this, all of the iOS protections that exist to stop excessive IAPs were bypassed with the password.
The elephant in the room is that we, as a society, are allowing these games to exist at all. Yes they are entertainment products but they should have limits on their abusive nature. I mean if you can fleece someone for $500 on a game that no one would pay $60 for - good for you you've scammed someone but $5000+ is criminal (or rather should be).
This is a dark pattern which is a user interface designed to trick people into doing things.
I'm surprised how many Slashdotters have replied "he ought to keep closer control of what his kid is doing" and "Apple isn't at fault, they just created the system". Apple is responsible for the user interface and just because the user "could have navigated the user interface" and not had his kid buy the in-app purchases doesn't mean that Apple isn't responsible. "You could have figured out the bad user interface" is never an excuse, especially when the bad user interface is on purpose.
I feel IMHO should be banned on any game targeting an audience below 12 years old. At the very least in-app purchases above a certain amount or accumulated amount should require external authentication, to prevent this exact scenario.
As for the 'in-app purchase are evil' subject, it is because you'll frequently get a free app and then find it goes on to nickel-and-dime the whole experience. What is the real price of a free app with in-app purchasing? Here we saw it was potentially well above $5000. At that price $60 console games look cheap.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I totally agree. Would you give your kid your credit card, pat him on the head and then send him to the arcade? That's what this clueless putz did.
I used to administer a billing system for mobile phones back from the late 1990s into the early 2000s and even back then we used to get calls from irate parents with this exact problem. Back then it was mostly kids and teenagers racking up $1000 plus bills with SMS lottery games and occasionally even back then through excessive internet use while on vacation etc... Dealing with some of the complaints we got thought me three things. Firstly, you would be amazed at the size of the bills kids and can rack up on mobile devices if you put them on a subscription based service (I remember one in the region of $11000). We solved this problem by programming the billing system to cap spending at a low default value forcing people to turn up and explicitly have the spending roof lifted. Secondly, having seen a hard nosed manager insist on payment I can tell you that you are better off waiving these bills or refunding because the parent's second call is always going to be the local tabloid or TV station. For some reason some hard nosed managers seem to have to learn that lesson the hard way. Thirdly, nothing teaches a child or teenager fiscal responsibility quicker than giving them a budget and letting them figure out for them selves that they can't have everything and must prioritise and if they want more money they'll have to get a job mowing lawns or down at the supermarket stuffing plastic bags and collecting shopping carts. So in light of my experience I would suggest:
a) Never give my kid your own personal iPad/Android Tablet.
b) Buy a used iPad/Android Tablet for the kid to use they are not *THAT* expensive.
c) Give the kid an allowance and make him/her buy gift cards to finance their gaming and give him/her a prepaid subscription they have to fill from their allowance for their internet and telephone needs.
The real WTF is that you can possibly run up a bill that large in just 6 days with a free to pay game.
We don't just "allow" them, as a society, we demand them.
We're a society that happily spends $8 on a latte we drink in under a minute but refuses to pay $1 for a game we'd spend hours on.
We're a society that balks at paying a monthly subscription fee to pay for game servers, yet will happily spend far more money on fake items. Think of how many times you've heard of a game "going free to play" and had their profits skyrocket because of it?
The elephant in the room is that, yes, Apple does absolutely think it's possible some guy will randomly spend $6000 on virtual dinosaurs. It happens all the time. And we, as a society, are quite willing to make that possible solely so we don't have to spend our latte-money on a game we'd spend far more time with. We demanded free to play games, and we got them.
Know what your kid is doing on the computer/tablet/etc. It's not a trained babysitter.
Yet as a parent, I get it. We're fairly conservative, we limit screen time but it's a HUGE magnet for kids and it's easy for non-technical parents to not realize their kids can spend real money or how to block it, and kids aren't stupid, they can guess passwords. Our son figured out my wife's password (observing her typing) and ran up $90 on iTunes before we caught it. Kids are impulsive.
That being said, we paid it and made him pay us back through extra chores accounted on a big sign on the fridge and a loss of access to the iPad. We didn't ask for a refund because we owned the problem and of course getting the refund would be a time consuming headache in and of itself.
That being said, in-app purchases are bullshit. They degrade the quality of all apps by masking their true cost and lack of basic quality. Apple's controls are really weak, especially for parents, and there should be a way to set spending limits that protect the parent and the kids.
The $6k refunded by Apple is bullshit compared to the thousands of parents who have paid the $90 like us, and I'm sure Apple just knows a lot of people eat $$$ in unwanted in-app purchases and it's part of the model. They don't *want* more controls.
I'd like to see Apple eliminate in-app purchases completely. Developers should price their apps up front, release multiple versions if they want multiple price points. Shitty apps and especially games that do nothing without a ton of in-app purchases should die. I don't even bother with games at all anymore because they're all rigged to be mostly unplayable without upgrades, and I tend to avoid apps of any kind that flog upgrades via in-app purchases. It's a crappy racket.
Fortunately, current iPads have that built-in fingerprint trigger lock that gun manufactures can still only dream of.
As a firearms owner and carrier (30+ years of EDC) I would never, ever want a fingerprint reader or interlock on any of my firearms. When I pull the trigger, I want it to go bang, period. I don't want to see a "LOW BATTERY" warning or a find out a circuit is fried when I need it most.
Might as well put a fingerprint interlock on a fire extinguisher or a baseball bat- do you have any idea how often those things are misused?
(And for the record, I'm not some right-wing whacko, I'm one of the most liberal, left-leaning people you'll ever meet, no joke.)
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
WHO demanded fee-to-play (they certainly aren't free) games? Nobody I know fucking did, and most I know hate it.
First they took local LAN play, so you could only play when online.
FTP is basically just a scam to hide the real cost of a game, be it free install or otherwise.
On tablets etc, games didn't *require* paying of course, unless your actually wanted to progress beyond a certain point.
Meanwhile on PC/console, we got unlockable "achievements", which was kinda cool until those became necessary to unlock items in the game.
Then off course, came the ability to "pay" for unlocks, so you had the ability to play 10,000h for a sniper scope or pay in order to compete with the fucking rich kids who bought them at $50
Back to tablet, oh now we're not charging you money, you get game "credits" (which of course your can purchase) to obfuscate the cost of things further.
Lastly, let us not forget DLC. What used to be legitimate add-ons a year or so after release became 0-day nickel-and-dime cash grabs to get a full game.
Tell me, when did we ask for this shit? Because it seems to me that as soon as the industry see dollar signs, every fucking game went there. EA was the biggest sell-out, but with them and other big names buying out any game studio that produces a decent product, your choices are pretty much limited to whose dick you want to take up your ass, and with how much lube (lube available in micropayments of $5/application).
You can buy "prepaid" cards to load finds for purchases made via their respective "stores".
I cannot imagine any situation where you would register a real world credit card to allow direct charges with either of them.
It's sad that people blindly accept that giving a service provider direct access to their credit card or bank account number is a suitable way to pay anything, and its what leads to situations just like this one.
My son has an iPhone. It has a preloaded balance. It CANNOT spend anymore than that. If he runs low he can ask me for a another iTunes card.
I have an Android phone. Same setup - preloaded balance that it CANNOT exceed. It does not have the ability to use anymore than the balance that I have loaded, which I (and ONLY *I*) can replenish as needed
For any service that will not bill any way OTHER than to a credit card, or for any online purchase, I use this:
https://www.bankofamerica.com/...
They could trivially add a config UI element to set purchase limits.
Or, even more easily, they could just email you a receipt every time a purchase is made. That would have put a stop to this way before the kid racked up a $5,900 bill. Instead, Apple queues up purchases for days or weeks on end before running one big charge, presumably to save on credit card transaction fees. Only then do they finally send you an email informing you that you've been charged.
I purchased the ad-free version of Words with Friends on December 23rd so I could play more while riding on a road trip for the holiday. I didn't get a receipt until New Year's Eve. That's unacceptable and is contradictory to how any other ecommerce venture operates. If I order something from Amazon, they don't bill my card until the item ships, but they sure do send me a receipt immediately so I know what's happening on my account.
As a firearms owner and carrier (30+ years of EDC) I would never, ever want a fingerprint reader or interlock on any of my firearms. When I pull the trigger, I want it to go bang, period.
Going a bit off topic, but if your gun was instead in the hands of your son or daughter pointing it at themselves or others I bet you'd like it to not go bang. Gun suicide and misuse using family owned guns is a much bigger problem than self defense unless you live in an unusually dangerous neighborhood, and before you say they can commit suicide another way studies in the UK after it switched from poisonous coal gas to safe natural gas shows the overall suicide rate falls if you take away an easy suicide method (no more "sticking your head in the oven")
I set up an Apple ID for my nephew on iTunes with an AppleTV and iPad he received for christmas. His parents asked me to set it up properly because they'd heard all the horror story rumors about how you needed a credit card.
You just sign up for the account and select NONE when you make the account. YOU DO NOT NEED TO PROVIDE A PAYMENT METHOD AT ALL FIRST TIME.
I did this just two days ago.
Can you imagine a gunman breaking into your house
No. Thank god i don't live in America.